Just as an interesting exercise, is it possible to process, say a .bmp version of an infragram image, in such a way as to retrieve a true-color image? I suggest .bmp because of the very simple 3 (RGB) bytes per pixel file format which makes it easy to modify these values. What do these bytes represent in the near-IR image? Is there an algorithm to edit them "back" to a true color image? Or is there no relationship which will work repeatably for different kinds of scenes?

1 Answers

An infragram photo file does not contain enough information to produce a normal color image of the scene. The infragram filter blocks most of the blue or red light, so information about that color is mostly missing (that color channel is used to capture information about near infrared light). Without the missing color channel, a normal color image cannot be made.